Believe it or not, a tropical blood parasite native to Latin America could be harmful to Canadians. Infectious diseases like malaria or Zika may have dominated recent headlines but Chagas – the “Kissing Bug” disease – is in the spotlight following the publication of a new case study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ). Tropical and laboratory medicine experts from Winnipeg and Montreal warn natives of specific Central and South American nations and their offspring are at risk of contracting Chagas disease – even after they have moved to Canada.
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A clinical trial almost ten years in the making has revealed that risky, but powerful, clot busting drugs and medical devices do not improve outcomes for patients experiencing deep vein thrombosis (DVT), nor do they prevent the development of post-thrombotic syndrome (PTS) when compared with conventional blood thinning medications. The results of the Acute Venous Thrombosis: Thrombus Removal with Adjunctive Catheter-Directed Thrombolysis (ATTRACT) study are published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
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One of four Federation of Clinical Immunology (FOCiS) centres of excellence in Canada and nearly 75 worldwide, the Centre of Excellence in Translational Immunology (CETI) in Montreal is gaining new momentum. Its director, Dr. Ciriaco Piccirillo, a professor of microbiology and immunology at McGill University and senior scientist at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC), finds that members now benefit from the concentration of state-of-the-art technology and expertise at the Glen site, CETI’s base. With its first Annual Research Day set for December 1, the RI-MUHC sat down with Dr. Piccirillo to learn more about CETI.
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A recent study led by researchers at McGill University’s Faculty of Medicine published in the October issue of the Journal of Hepatology reports on the results of the first large-scale study which shows that people living with HIV are indeed at high risk of developing fatty liver, even in the absence of hepatitis-C co-infection, which has been typically associated with liver disease.
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Paul Savage, an MD/PhD student in Dr. Morag Park’s lab at the Goodman Cancer Research Centre, recently published the paper “A Targetable EGFR-Dependent Tumor-Initiating Program in Breast Cancer” in the journal Cell Reports. The paper focuses on research surrounding triple negative breast cancer, a highly aggressive form of the disease which tends to relapse within the first three years after diagnosis. The collaborative study aimed to, “see whether diversity of tumors can be targeted by going after specific cells, known as cancer stem cells,” explained Mr. Savage.
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This past year, as part of the Canada 150 celebration, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research invited researchers to share their stories on how they are tackling health problems in Canada. This month features the work of Drs. Vincent Giguère, Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and member of the Goodman Cancer Research Centre (GCRC), and Étienne Audet-Walsh, formerly of the GCRC, and their research on prostate cancer.
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Music theorists have long emphasized that although musical taste is relative, our enjoyment of music, be it classical or heavy metal, arises, among other aspects, from structural features of music, such as chord or rhythm patterns that generate anticipation and expectancy. Now, researchers from the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital of McGill University have proven it is possible to increase or decrease our enjoyment of music, and our craving for more of it, by enhancement or disruption of certain brain circuits.
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Research has already shown that women who develop either diabetes or high blood pressure during pregnancy are at risk of getting type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure or heart disease years later. Now, a new study from a team at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) and McGill University shows that the risk of developing those conditions post pregnancy is drastically higher if the women had both diabetes and high blood pressure during pregnancy. The study, published today in the American Journal of Epidemiology, doesn’t end with the mother’s risks. The father’s risks also rise if the mother has one gestational condition and rises even higher if she has both.
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A new study, which is published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Pediatrics, and was led by researchers from King’s College London, Harvard University, University of Bristol and McGill University, examined more than 13,000 Belarussian teenagers enrolled in the PROmotion of Breastfeeding Intervention Trial (PROBIT) and found a 54% reduction in cases of eczema amongst teenagers whose mothers had received support to breastfeed exclusively.
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A person with a confident voice may do more than just make you think he or she is comfortable in their own skin. They could very well convince you that they are more trustworthy. A recently published study by postdoctoral researcher Xiaoming Jiang found that a confidently spoken phrase elicits a higher degree of trust than one spoken with doubt. A surprising aspect of the study, published in Human Brain Mapping, was that the actors who spoke in neutral tones were perceived as even more trustworthy than those affecting confident tones.
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